Venice-Milan-Paris! 10 days of crazy shopping & walking!

YAY! It's my virgin trip to Europe! My long-awaited trip's finally here! We were supposed to go for this trip in May, but due to some unforeseen situations, Jas can't make it and we all decided to postpone the trip together with her. Although we have to each top up around S$900 more, I guess it is well worth it cos it is important to go on this trip together as a team! :)

Preparing for the trip at home! Feeling excited!!! :)

Finally I reached airport!! Saw Betsy and both us decided to have a coffee and wait for Jas....

 

Excited! We are behaving like kids!!!

Finally, we took the flight - Air France and off we go!!! it's gonna be a 12hours flight... I simply love direct flights!!! I can sleep or watch TV on board without having to get off the plane to wait for connecting flights.

Yay! We reached CDG!!!! It was early morning around 645am. See how many luggages we have! But watch out... We actually will come back with MORE! LOL!!

We have another flight to catch to Venice (around 10am, I think). So we decided to have Starbucks breakkie and laze around the airport...

After breakkie, we proceed to the check-in counter of Easy-Jet (a budget airline) and we have to wait around 1.5 hours.

 

Yay! The flight was ready and off we go again! This time, we are going Venice!!! :)

After around 2 hours flight, we reached Venice. Decided to try to buy the boat tickets ourselves. But we gave up! This machine was not really "friendly"! They don't accept notes, only credit cards! Strange! We were not the only ones who gave up. All other tourists who read the instructions (mainly in Italian) all walked away. There was no way that we could buy any tickets from this machine.

 

Well, I am sure there are other counters outside the airport. So after collecting our luggages, we walked out the airport and got our tickets from a counter (with a staff to help us). GREAT!

 

We bought the ticket for the public boat - Alilaguna. This boat ride will bring us to the station near our B&B. Perfecto!

 

 

The weather was horribly HOT! We were shocked... I always thought Asia is the hottest place on earth. Western countries "Hot" should not be as bad as our "Hot", no? Well, I was soooo wrong! I could now appreciate my weather now. Definitely not gonna like the weather here in Italy!

We boarded the Alilaguna and it was awesome! Erm... For me only. LOL!

Both Jas and Betsy were seasick! Oh oh!!! LOL~~ It is so nice to be in the ocean and feeling the ups-and-down of the sea motion! FANTASTIC feeling! I could live on-board a boat anytime!! :)

Poor Betsy!

 

Anyway, I decided to take a few photos of the trip from the boat station to our destination... Fantastic view of the entire Venice! :)

 

 

 

 

Saw an interesting statue! A FAT naked lady! LOL!!!

 

This is St Marco statue, I think... :) The Venice town!

 

 

And finally, we reached the station Zattoria. And from a map from the owner of the B&B, we walked about 15 mins and found our stay!!! Actually we could get to the B&B within 10mins, but we had 3 big luggeges and we had to cross over many bridges and steps to get to this place... OMG! I realized this place was definitely not very friendly for heavy luggages and weak legs! Too many steps and no escalators or lifts! LOL...

 

The room was nice! :) Cosy and clean...

 

 

The shower was a bit slow but overall it was nice! :)

After putting our luggage and freshen up a bit, we followed the instructions on where to find food.. We realised that it was already 4pm and we didn't even have any lunch! We didn't expect the boat ride to be at least 1.5 hours long! WOW!!! I can still feel the sea motion! LOL!

We were tired and hungry actually... And the silly HOT weather didn't help at all.

 

We decided to find the restaurant "Al Artisti"... And finally we found it! But....

 

The staffs were quite unfriendly! They totally ignore us and as we were already tired and hungry, we decided to just pop-in the restaurant nearby...

Seemed much better!

 

We were famished and ordered 3 dishes of spaggetti! They tasted nice... Perhaps I'm just too hungry to notice! LOL!

After the dinner, we walked a bit and bought sunblocks... It costed E$22! Wow! Hahaha!!! Guess not many people buy sunblocks, so it was soooo expensive!

Anyway, we were too tired and decided to go back to the room to rest and wifi... LOL! It was only around 5pm I think but we were too jet-lagged and tired (from carrying all the luggages and walking up and down the steps!).... That ended our first day... :)

The next day, we were fresh and ready to go! :) We walked back to the bridge with locks. Apparently couples will buy locks and locked the locks onto this bridge to bless them with good relationship. LOL!

 

Some interesting sights along the streets...

 

Of course we had to see the Gondolas! LOL!! They were everywhere! :)

 

 

 

Guess Venice is big on glass arts too... They called it the Murano Burano...

 

Oh and of course, we were here to search for Hard Rock! Yay! We found it! :)

Jas and Betsy bought some tees for themselves and family... :)

 

(Selfies in HRC!)

 

While they were busy shopping, I did some selfies! LOL!

OMG! The palazzo square is sooooo amazing and grand! We continued our leisure walk along the town... Under the HOT sun!! LOL! We were the only Asians carrying an umbrella to shade the sun... :)

(This is my best shot! Totally love this photo!)

 

I really looked sooooo SMALL here! Everything was soooo hige!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Tired!!!) and HOT!!!

Went to a small artty museum and saw some nice art pieces. These were all made up of florenscent lamps! Interesting!

We were hot and tired from all the walking. So we decided to sit and had an early lunch. It was around 1130am only but I felt like I had walked forever! Cos the weather was too hot to be comfortable....

 

 

 

*View from the restaurant*

Selfie after lunch! :)

Seemed like lemon soda was the "national drink" here in Venice! :)

 

This restaurant was nice and they had a Chinese staff whom we can help to ask for directions. :)

After lunch, it is only around 1pm and the sun was sooooo big and strong here. We heard it was around 37 degree! OMG! So we need to decide what to do... Continue walking or go back? Well, since we just had our lunch, we decided to take a walk anyway... And if the weather continued to be sooo hot, we shall go back to our room and rest till the night.

Well, after some walking, we decided to take a tea break at a cafe. We ordered some drinks and I decided to try the "Campari". I had no idea what is Campari... And it tasted horrible! Yucks!!! EEeeeee... Just like cough syrup went wrong! LOL...

 

And it is funny how a dog can be left roaming around the cafe with no one to look after. And when Betsy put up her legs on the cafe bench to take a rest, the staff told her not to do that. But the dog can just jump up onto the cafe benches too! With all 4 legs!!! And the staffs were OK with that!

 

It was so funny that humans were treated worse than a dog! LOL! I realized people love dogs here. Everywhere there were dogs around... Hmmmm... Maybe there was nothing much to do here thus people have to have pets as companions.... mmmm...

Anyway, it was really too hot and we decided to go back to our room to take a break. We would want to go watch a theatre show later tonight. Yippeee!!! So exciting!!! :)

 

Before the show, we decided to go for a bite cos we were running out of time. We took too long to find the theatre, that's why we did not have enough time for a good dinner. The place was terribly ULU!!! But we were very lucky to find the place!!!

We knew the waiting time at restaurants were very long. Thus it would be risky for us to go for a restuarant meal. We then decided to check out this bar near the theatre. The atmosphere seemed very nice and posh... We totally loved it! And we were given free snacks with our drinks. Yay!!! :)

We were really looking forward to this theatre show. I was getting very excited now!!! :)

Lucky we finished our food and drinks and went over to the theatre. There was already one very LONG queue!! OMG! We didn't have any reservations, so we were very worried that we might not get a seat. :(

We were very lucky to get seats cos according to them, the place might be full any moment. And the place was really small, like can only accomodate 60pax max!

It was really an experience! This is not the usual theatre stage show, where the actors will act on the stage. The "stage" was actually the entire house! There was the living room and 2 bedrooms. Total there will be 3 scenes taking place at these 3 locations, and we will have to shift and move to the other rooms for the next 2 scenes. So exciting!!!

The first scene was at the living room. The Count was in love with the lady but he was afraid that she will like him because of his status and also her teacher was a fierce old man and it would be tough to get his blessings. So he engaged the help of his friend, a Barber to be the middle-man. The Barber knew the lady well and thus, he set up an opportunity for them to meet. And he asked the Count not to reveal his real identity and fake that he is just a teacher. So funny!!!

The next scene was at the lady's room... Betsy was sooo good! She managed to snatch the best seats in this room! Just beside the pianist!!! OOOOOO!!! He was soooo handsome!!! :)

The actors were sooo close to us!!! They were basically acting in front of us! And as we were seated near the entrance/exit door, the lady actor sometimes will look at us and sing to us! It was funny! The scenes were all in Italians, so we didn't understand a single bit. But we followed the script closely and we can grasp the main story line. Easy! And very entertaining!!! :)

The last scene was in the bedroom... Nice decor!

Of course, finally the couple got to married each other and happy ending!!!

It was really a very good experience and I totally enjoyed it.

I wished I could watch another show again, but we only have 4 days here. It's already midnight and we would need to wake up early tomorrow to visit the Museum. :)

Today is our last full day in Venice. We decided to visit the Palazzo Ducale, a palace... Seemed like a nice place! And we hope to find the restaurant "Rosso Pomodoro", highly recommended by the owner of our B&B.